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Gevenalle Adds Up-Armored Front Derailleur to Cyclocross Gruppo

Gevenalle, formerly Retroshift, just released the BURD Front Derailleur/Chain Guide for cyclocross. Like their BURD rear derailleur, the “Blatantly Upgraded and Rebranded Derailleur” is a hacked, top-of-the-line Microshift component that they rebuilt to better serve ‘cross racers who demand reliable shifting in brutal conditions. The derailleurs, along with their standard pull, long pull, and hydraulic shift levers; and cassette spacer are giving cyclists an affordable and reliable – if not particularly pretty or light – alternative to Campagnolo, Shimano, and SRAM.

The folks at Gevenalle replaced the lightweight carbon Microshift cage with a smaller, rigid steel piece of their own design, and made some other secret tweaks, to make a derailleur that will best suit the relatively small gear range but huge shifting loads that differentiate cyclocross from road drivetrains. Gevenalle also claims that the FD is ideally suited to single ring chainguide use, thanks to limiter screws that allow the reinforced cage to be dialed in exactly where you want it.

Price, specs, and their service plan after the break…

The BURD front derailleur costs $49, and if you do succeed in damaging it, Gevenalle will rebuild it for only $20 including return shipping in the US.

Complete Specs:

Compatibility: 10 Speed Campagnolo, Shimano, and SRAM, or Single Speed

If I was building a gravel/touring bike I’d deck it out with a Gevenalle drivetrain easily. Count my vote in for a top pull option. Running a CX70 right now because I hate those pulleys. Hope you guys can convince Microshift to make one.

“Why should someone buy this instead of a $30 Tiagra derailleur from Shimano? What advantages does this more expensive item offer?” Flip

Didn’t you know that if you don’t drop huge coin you are not a “real” cyclist? We live in a world of bikes that cost more than NEW cars and more than NEW motorcycles that are go over 180mph. Don’t look for things to make sense. Stupid is, as stupid does.

Flip/Bryin – The Tiagra is a fine unit but many are going to prefer an Ultegra or even Dura-ace unit for their bikes simply for the lighter weight and quality. For cyclocross a better bet would be a CX70 with smaller cage that better matches the gearing used for cross. Our BURD CXF now gives you an option to the CX70 with correct cage size plus lighter weight and a crash replacement service. We also provide our products to bike shops to sell at a good margin so if you care about bike shop health this should be an extra plus!

anonymous – Arsis only comes with a full sized road cage. Our unit swaps this out for a much smaller and stiffer cage. Not sure what is meant by ‘secret tweaks’ – we are very up front with what we do for our customers.

Top Pull – Ok, ok we hear you! ‘Rome was not built in a day’ or The cake did not go in one bike’ as we like to say. This is a super option for a good number of bikes, we will work on expanding in time.

Goats – per “secret tweaks” I only had your lit to go on, which broadly described the smaller cage. Presuming there are other changes to accommodate said cage, I thought it was a catchy phrase. Obviously, a side-by-side comparison of your gruppo, the unmodified components, and your peer competitors is in order.

Andrew Stackhouse – We know not where the ‘secret tweaks’ phrase came from but probably legit in use as we do make changes that are not mentioned (it might bore people to tell them all that we do). We use for example replaceable pins for the cage unlike the Microshift variant so that cages can be replaced if damaged.

To the folks at retroshift, if you wanted to make your FDs top pull, but still have a bottom pull option, and without having to pull teeth over at microshift, there is another easy solution. Make a new product that is a small steel arm (length and angle has to be carefully calculated) that mounts to the arm of your FD. If done right, the cable geometry can be exactly the same, and your FDs will work perfectly as top pull. There is a German company that already makes these for a very limited no. of FDs. Theire cost was a bit high for me, so after doing some dimensional analysis, I made a one-off custom arm like this (out thick AL sheet metal stock) for a FD-5603 that I had. It now works flawlessly as a top pull triple with 5603 STI levers. So it can be done.

Greg – We changed our name to Gevenalle to better reflect our focus on cross. Nice bags by the way! (www.darkspeedworks.com).

We are familiar with the method of which you speak (we like clever engineering http://www.speen.de/Docs/Specification%20Umlenker.pdf) and it does work but it does add more complexity and weight and could be another part of the equation to go wrong. Our preference would be to make it as simple, durable, light as possible to get job done. Also we will have to take into account the probable move to 11 speed and it will be our desire to produce something that is might need other changes in cable pull to remain compatible.

Hi,
I really enjoy the cx shifters. I use them touring and gravel biking.
However, they do not work fine with deore. Thats why I wish to get the burd derailleur.
I just wonder how the front one works on triple crankset…?
Thanks
Philippe

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